oneevilbob's page

I've always allowed non-wizards to craft magical weapons and armor, persuming they could craft the mundane versions of course. But you do have to balance it and its not that hard.

When a Wizard needs 50,000 gp to craft a weapon through handweaving those arcane components are able to make the sword. Whats preventing you from letting the 50,000 GP worth of materials contain a Firegland from a dragon (for Flaming effects) or the like. Make the players gather them up, its not that hard as by the time they have cleared a dungeon they can find something that will be useable as a magical item.

I was wondering if anyone had considered using the 4th edition style skills or Trained/Untrained with a flat rate and removing skill points. I've seen too many players play very vast and loose with the skill points and the set rate and set leveling enhancements (as well as the lower seperation between skill checks) make for easier gming.

In short, at 20th level you have Rogue Steve, he has 23 ranks in perception and with his modifiers and feats he has somewhere near a +34 modifier. Bob the Fighter has a +6. An epic difficulty check gives Steve a Yawn and Bob has no chance of spotting it, matter of fact the 3rd level torch bearer with Bob has a better chance due to his skill selections than our epic fighter.

Now, if we use the 4th trained skills (handful of things I liked in that edition, small handful) Steve has around a +20 modifier (+10 for level, + 5 for trained, +5 for other)where as Bob has a +12 (+10 for level, +2 for attribute) Steve is still the hands on favorite, but Bob now at least has some small chance to find his target... (and before it comes up, untrained skills would have limitations, Bob for example couldn't pick locks because that would require a trained skill, though he might search for non-magical traps rather ineptly)

Just a though.